May 6, 2016: In the wake of the late 2015 ISIL attack in Paris and the early 2016 attack in Brussels most European countries were forced (by the majority of voters and much of the local media) to reveal data on the extent of Islamic terrorist activity in local security forces. Governments had been collecting this data for over a decade but had largely kept it out of the news. There was growing public pressure to go public with this information and the Paris and Brussels attacks made that happen. Germany reported that since 2007 at least 22 military personnel have been identified as Islamic radicals and supporters of Islamic terrorism. Five of these people had competed their service and were civilians again but 17 were still in uniform and were dismissed from service. In addition at least 65 military personnel are currently under investigation for Islamic terrorist sympathies and 29 former military personnel have been identified as having gone to Syria to join ISIL.

Neighboring Netherlands, with a much smaller population, found that as many as 20 former military personnel have been identified as having gone to Syria to participate in the fighting. However all but one of these joined Christian or Kurdish militias to fight against ISIL. Most European countries don’t keep track of their citizens who go to Syria or Iraq to fight against ISIL. While that is illegal in most countries it is not considered a threat to national security like membership in ISIL is.

France has long been more open with this data. But France recently admitted that since early 2015 the number of suspected Islamic terrorists in general had risen 50 percent to 8,250. Worse, the French admitted they had problems with some Moslems in their own security forces. France had identified 17 M0slem policemen who had been radicalized since 2012. It was already public knowledge that by early 2015 at least ten Moslem French soldiers had deserted and joined ISIL in Syria. Some of these deserters have since been identified as training other terrorists in skills they learned in the French military. One of these deserters had risen to a leadership position in ISIL. The problems with radicalized police were worse because police have access to police databases containing information about terrorism suspects, counter-terrorism tactics and ongoing counter-terrorism operations. Not all the details of this Islamic terrorists infiltration of the security forces has become public and it is believed there is more of it and the French are, for obvious reasons, not revealing exactly what they are doing about it.

Britain has similar problems and at one point it was noted in the British media that more Moslem men of military age were joining Islamic terrorist organizations than were joining the British military. In the wake of the 2005 Islamic terrorist bombings in Britain a survey of British Moslems was conducted. Not surprisingly 88 percent of the million Moslems in Britain were either hostile or unsympathetic to Islamic terrorism. But 24 percent has some sympathy for the motives of the terrorists (“defending Islam” and all that) while six percent believed the Islamic terrorist violence was justified. More troubling was the 18 percent of British Moslems who felt little loyalty towards Britain and instead believed “Islam” was where their main loyalty was. Islam stresses this in its scripture.